But that statement will not be taken at face value — not yet — and the shooting will once again raise the question of loyalist guns and decommissioning.

A few days ago the Independent Monitoring Commission produced its latest assessment of paramilitary organisations — part of which addressed the issue of loyalist weapons.

Of the UVF, the commissioners said: “We could not rule out that some arms had been retained in some parts of the organisation.”

And of the UDA, the commission stated: “We believe that the achievement of decommissioning was hard won, that some areas took a lot of convincing, and that the delivery (of weapons for decommissioning) may have been uneven.”

There is no such thing as complete decommissioning. Every group will have kept guns — loyalist and republican.

Bobby Moffet was once part of one of those loyalist groups. He lived and died in that paramilitary underworld.